31 March 2016

Happy Birthday John!

We truly are the luckiest household in the world, having you in our lives, looking after us, looking out for us, caring for us, loving us.

I've no idea what I'd be doing if you hadn't come into my life, but I know that now, 5 and a bit years on from you falling at my feet (well, sort of) I feel more alive, feel like every day I want to get up and face whatever life throws at us.

Anyway, dear readers, I'm writing all this whilst my husband and the boys are out on a Birthday Bike Ride. The boys said it's traditional, and now Mycroft's got his own wheels they can still go without little old me.

So I've been here, setting up tea. There's two sorts of cake, there's posh little sandwiches, involving cucumber and salmon and things, no crusts, naturally, there's biscuits (Mrs Hudson, I owe you, because John still thinks he's just getting cake) and there's indoor sparklers, because candles have been banned (owing to global warming). The boys have both got their poshest suits ready to throw on when they get back, and I'm about to clamber into my best bib and tucker in a minute, once I'm done with this.

My leg is getting better all the time, I'm allowed to walk in my big air boot thing, it's just a bit awkward. And I'm allowed to take it off in bed now, and for washing. It's just about being careful not to stretch anything I don't mean to... which doesn't include stretching that I do have to do, which John helps with, and is amazing at, because otherwise once I am allowed back onto it properly it'll all have healed too tightly. So. It's boring because Sherlock, particularly, is so FAST and I am so SLOW (as he tells me, frequently). And I can't ride my bike. and and and boring boring boring.

BUT it has given me a few weeks to thoroughly enjoy John's company (and feel lonely when he's off at work). It is lovely, just spending time together, relaxed, laughing, getting on with bits and pieces. Although I do have some paperwork to do now. But still, I get to do it with him. :)

And here's a composite photo of some bees that Sherlock found. I think it's by some people called Acidmath. It's very beautiful, anyway.

Lestrade is so old that only elephants and whales and some other undersea creatures can be older than him and John is nearly that old but when I'm that old I bet I'll still be young because we'll be able to live longer. And I'll still be able to think of things I want for my birthday because John and Lestrade never can think of anything.

There was frogspawn and the pond at school needs cleaning and Lestrade can't do it until he's better.

Oh Sherlock, there are quite a number of us at least a couple of years older than Lestrade. Just think, when you are a quite grown man, older than Mycroft is now, how positively ANCIENT John & Lestrade will be!

And yet some vital spark will remain, which I'm sure they'll be clinging to with both hands, still riding their bikes and working and going on holiday. Possibly even still cooking and baking for you, at least on special days.

Happy birthday, John. It sounds like a wonderful day was had by all. :)

You're right in saying that people seemed so much older when we were young, but when we get to those ages ourselves they seem so different. I think the important thing is a young attitude (that's what I tell myself when I hit ages I'd rather not consider!) and with those lovely boys around, you certainly have that so make the most of it & keep telling yourself you're 21 inside. ;)

The year 2000 was going to be so magical when I was a kid - it was properly The Future.

It's kind of sad to think Sherlock won't have a big date like that to look forward to.

Mycroft bought me some delicious Colombian coffee. And well done to some kids out playing today in Surrey who lay on the ground and formed a human arrow for the police helicopter to track some burglars! Top notch.

But maybe not having a big benchmark date will make it easier for him to look forward to the less socially but more personally relevant dates?

It's fun to be in on something historically significant, but history is happening all the time. Neither 1929 nor 1969 were particular years if you just go by date, but things changed A LOT because of the wall street crash and the moon landing. (I've chosen dates from US history because I didn't study world history nearly so well as I should have) Okay, that's me done pontificating now.

errr, well, he's admitted he will have to leave. He's said he definitely doesn't want to go to Mycroft's school....and we haven't got a lot further than that. His teachers are very helpful though, about where might be good for him.

I applied for, and subsequently gained, a place at GCHQ, where I hope to learn a lot about what they do, with a particular slant toward cyber security.

Although I will be attending a 'Summer School' in name, and it is residential, it does also pay a small wage.

I will not, however much Lestrade may imply it, be a spy, or drive an Aston Martin, or, indeed, sit in a large office stroking a white cat. I will not become a 'double O', be issued with any gadgetry or answer to M. Nor, I hope, will inaccurate films be made about my life in the future.

You're right, Nameless, I think the cat angle is worth revisiting - after all, there is a prime candidate ready & waiting in the wings & she already has plans to take over the world. ;) Plus, we've already seen her beetroot pink so I'm sure she wouldn't mind being floured white. ;) (Sorry, Mycroft. It is wonderful news though & can only lead on to bigger & better things for your future so congratulations.)

SH - I don't know, I think I get one of those deja vu echoes when you say Lestrade - was it Gavin Lestrade? or Geoffrey? Or maybe it wasn't Lestrade, maybe it was something else? Oh well, probably I'm mistaken . . .

I thought for SURE Goonyella had to be a 'barn name' so I googled to find the horse's real name & lo & behold discovered that yet again the Australians rival the Americans for improbably named points of interest.

I don't know if it's the fact that both nations were settled largely by riff raff and malcontents or if it's the misappropriation of native language. But surely no other English-speaking nations are in the running.

To return to the point, I'm all for rooting for improbably named Irish-trained equines. Guess it's o.k. your horse didn't win though - since ghost-like echos of a man seem unlikely to be able to collect.

There could indeed be a double bluff going on, fA. If only we knew a helpful Copper we could have asked about these things...

They do have bizarre names, don't they, RR. My sweepstake pick was 'shutthefrontdoor' which was just as weird. I always like it when they do mickey take jokes on horse race commentaries:... and in the final straight it's 'beanpole' coming up behind 'myarse'... It would be so funny if they really did something like that, but I wonder if there's some kind of restriction on horse names for that very reason.

Excellent news. Have you started physical therapy (other than that prescribed by your doctor-at-home)? If not, sounds like when you go in they'll evaluate you, give you a tear sheet of exercises and say "don't see why they sent you in, you don't need us!"

Yeah, started physio, got an hour a week with them until they decide I'm good to go. Got another scan coming up too to check everything that should be sticking together is, and everything that shouldn't be isn't. I think they said they used a bit of bone to pin in some ligaments or tendons or something so they want to keep an eye on it to check is doing what it should. I dunno, these doctors are clever people, eh?

RR - I'm just nervous about braking. It puts strain through everything the surgeons rebuilt for me. So whilst I'd like to pretend riding in London is all smooth and no panic-braking...it's not. And I don't want to damage either my leg or the rest of me if it all goes wrong in a hurry.

Even John is less back-brake happy than I am. When I ride pillion with him I always get the fear when we dip and I know he hasn't rear-braked at all (even though I know with me on the back it's not like it's going to go too light!) Should get him to give me lessons :)

I'm feeling like I got off quite lightly at the moment - yesterday one officer was run over by a 4x4, smashing his leg, and another was attacked with an axe, resulting in some horrific injuries. Best wishes to them both for a full and speedy recovery. And a big thanks to the members of the public who helped treat them at the scenes.

Well, I don't want to bring politics into this blog too much...but those of you interested in 'Brexit' (The UK referendum on whether we should stay part of the EU or not) should check out the 'voteleave' campaign. This is the OFFICIAL campaign for us to leave the EU.

Just look on voteleave.com, voteleave.co.uk, voteleave.org or voteleave.net and check out their well organised, well thought out official campaign messages on why we'd be better off out of the EU...........

I hope Mycroft has time to enjoy the people he may not see as often once he's left school or anything else that's unique to it. I'm sure he's looking forward to embarking on the next thing though.

I'll be attending my youngest's graduation from university in a few weeks which seems an official end date to the "kids" chapter of my life (though they've really been young adults for years now)- it seems half as long as the 27-ish years it's been!

It's presidential primary day in New York today, and it's so rare that the race isn't decided before we get to vote. I hope there is a LOT of turnout! (I get to choose between Hillary and Bernie, New York has closed primaries--you can only vote in your party's primary. Trump's children, as it happens, are not registered Republicans so they can't vote for him. Same for his lawyer. They CLAIM they didn't know they had to register back in October...)

A good Passover to you, RR. It's the only holiday celebration I've shared with Jewish friends (& thanks for the invitations over the years, Sandy & Rachel,) so this one I have a (no doubt secularized) frame of reference for.

I've just learned that we've lost another one. Prince died this morning. I was never one of the cool kids who got to see him live, but his music figured large in my life. Feels a bit like High School is just gone.

His work made my life immeasurably more fun, and wasn't he the fucking standard-bearer for one kind of stylish panache that the early '80s was sometimes lacking?

It's not like folks aren't dying too soon all the time, all around us. Some people are part of the foreground - the ones you actually know & care about. Others are more distant, but you chose them deliberately? The mental backdrop of your existence - the ones you used to furnish the inside of your head. You chose them to set the tone at certain times of your life, and you carry that with you always. Sometimes the distant ones are more of a shock, somehow.

The BBC's number/stats programme 'More or Less' actually did some analysis as to whether it really is a bad year or not. This was about a fortnight ago and yes, it is a more than averagely dead-guy filled year. I'm tired of crying, that's for sure.

Ha! The pot calls the kettle black, I think! & no, not saying which I'd guess is worse.

Of course my kids mock me for my one-sided conversations with other drivers. Which are far more satisfying now that they're old enough that I don't have to worry about a little bad language in the mix.

Yeah, Kestrel, that's pretty much why I trained till I could cover ("run" would be an overstatement) 14-15 miles - I never even entered an actual half marathon. The process was intermittently satisfying, but I have to say I found the longer training runs incredibly boring. I always thought that sometime I'd participate in an actual event, but I don't know if I'll ever get in that kind of shape again.

Just wanted to say well done to the Hillsborough families. They waved their loved ones off to watch a footy match and ended up with a 27 year fight for justice on their hands. I don't know how they found the strength to carry on sometimes. Justice for the 96.

Well it's blowing a gale and pouring with rain... But because John has made camping stick in my memory as a great thing, by making me the happiest man alive on a past camping trip... Im sort of looking forward to it. I'll admit it.

It has, actually, been fine. Which defies the natural laws of both camping and Bank Holidays. Expect the apocalypse any moment now.

We have walked, we have made dens, we have climbed trees (some of us rather more successfully than others - some of us weren't allowed) we have attempted to creep up on wild horses (none of us at all successfully). We have leant into the wind on cliff tops (some of us have fallen over) and we have watched huge cargo ships leaving port for who-knows-where and invented stories about their voyages (some of us have stated intentions to stow away. Others of us have stated intentions to fit satellite trackers to those ones.)

It has been lovely, and fun, and not at all boring, and I was just plain wrong in ever doubting it.

We haven't had anything either - the only political thing through the door has been that bloody EU leaflet that cost God knows how much. Even Mrs Hudson asked why they didn't make it a web page!

Sherlock is deeply confused by Europe. As he keeps pointing out, we are part of Europe, and unless there's a big earthquake and we float off across the atlantic, we'll always be a part of Europe..... he's taking it all a bit literally ;)

DO NOT ASK ME TO EXPLAIN THE US ELECTIONS! So far as I can tell, it can only be explained by assuming that the Republican Party has been taken over network executives. (I grew up in the sixties and seventies, so for me Bernie needs no explanation. :))

Actually, I do understand how the Republican Party fell apart: It's been a very loose coalition of completely unrelated "Anything but the Democrats" groups since...well, it's been going that way since Nixon, really. They were only held together by the party organization and big donors throwing financial and legislative sops to the religious right and Tea Party right and other extremists groups, herded by equally well-funded radio and cable hosts. The internet has been undermining that by letting extremists listen to only their own little slice of the world, so each group felt they had more power within the Party than they really did, and it all finally fell apart when the primaries began with too large a field of candidates.

My guess as to why Trump is their last man standing is that because he's so out of left field that people can project their own ideologies on him--and that by spewing hate-filled rhetoric as a major party candidate, he's made it acceptable for people to say things that no one should think, much less say.

(This analysis brought to you courtesy of too many years of graduate work in government and politics. It is limited in accuracy by the fact that nothing that has happened in this campaign season was supposed to be able to happen according to the theories of American Government that I studied.)

Yep, I had to google who was standing for the elections locally - we have one leaflet. And I didn't even realise there were the police thingy elections until Monday. Only thing I'd really noticed was that we have to go somewhere else to vote this time.

I'm doing my Presiding Officer bit again today for these Police Elections & we are currently at a 5% turn out with 5 hours left to go so I don't think we're even going to hit the 10% mark let alone the predicted 15%. We're making the most of our quiet time for this election as I'm sure the EU Referendum election will be fairly manic with everyone wanting to have their say.

I am fairly convinced by your theory of the Current Republican Something That Purports to be a Political Party, but I think (as I'm sure you could agree) there's a several more contributing factors that played a role in leading both parties where they are. I am more of a pessimist than most, but I do allow as how it could be worse, given that we have now PROVEN that a statistically unlikely combination of trends and events can bring the unthinkable into being.

I also imagine it would be hard to adequately explain to anyone in most other places in the world the current Democrats, as it's hard for folks in other places to understand how the mere word "socialist," however modified, can stampede a significant number of Americans into a panic that cannot be assuaged.

Well, we've done our civic duty. We were the only ones there when we went in.

Sherlock is easily bored by politics (he wandered off to find a banana to eat before I'd even started explaining what little I know about US politics) whereas Mycroft probably knows more then everyone else in our street added together.

Oh, it's for sure far more complicated, fA! I was just talking about a few long-term trends that jumped out at me--but this election cycle is going to produce a whole raft of new academic literature. (It's a boon to doctoral candidates in American Government, if to no one else!)

And I'm thinking about sharpening my practice swords. :D

Since Mycroft is looking from our circus at a distance he probably has a clearer view of it than I do, L!

One result of our crazy politics this time around was that the polling places were a good deal more busy than they usually are for the primaries--I think it was the first time I ever had to wait in line to vote in a national primary! I think that's a good thing to come out of it--at least people are engaged.

Well congratulations on your new mayor! I don't know anything about the governance of the City of London, so I don't know how good or bad he'll be, but [unlike American politics mumble mumble grumble] at least it gives us outsiders a positive impression of your electorate.